In the run-up to the Swedish national election 2014, humanism became a central concept in the debate. Foreign policy is normally not very prominent in Swedish election debates, but ongoing developments in the surrounding world and intensified domestic polemics regarding immigration, generated focus on aid and refugee reception. In this debate, political parties as well as other key representatives repeatedly used words such as human, humane, humanity and humanitarian in order to describe a situation or to motivate a certain position. This thesis seeks to answer questions about how these concepts are used in the debate, what they mean and how the discourse forms policy and politics. The investigation is guided by a critical constructivist theory, and the analysis consists of four parts: Quantitative mapping of how the words are utilized; Semiotic analysis of the meaning of certain elements in the discourse; Analysis of representation; Discussion about how discourse forms reality.
The results indicate that humanism is unanimously accepted as holding a positive meaning, or at least something that parties want to be associated with, which ought to differ it from other isms. There is a strong connection between discourse, political action, and reality. The study identifies a number of contexts where humanism occurs, namely: 1) Description of the Swedish society; 2) Support for Human Rights; 3) Sweden's responsibility to provide support; 4) Labelling certain politics, policies or reforms; 5) Description of situation in another country; 6) Description of another party; 7) Without direct reference to politics. In all categories of utilization of humanism, there were layers of meaning in the word choice or way a certain language was used. Differences in total frequency of humanism including all related key words can neither be explained by size of the party nor by the left-right political scale. There are however a number of factors that appear significant to understand variations in frequency, word choice and underlying norms and messages, including: normative context, political position (opposition/government), political color, media format, development norms, preconceived stereotypes, power-relations.

In the following research I strive to focus on the various aspects that influence the
‘empowerment’ issue of rural Indian women. I refer to two governmental reforms in
particular - the historic ‘Women’s Reservation Bill’ (WRB) which insists on a one
third participation of women at the lower tier of political structure in India called the
Panchayats and the controversial ‘Two Child Norm’ (TCN) which restricts political
participation of both men and women Panchayat candidates if the couple chooses to
have more that two children (Buch, 2005).
I spread my research over a variety of social actors relevant to this issue and use
Kabeer’s (1999) three-dimensional model of dissecting empowerment that analyzes
the term at an intrinsic level. It is revealed through this research and analysis that in
spite of the government’s efforts through the WRB reform of providing resources to
the rural women toward economic and social empowerment through political
participation, the power terrains of caste, culture and religion withhold their agency.
On the other hand, the tainted TCN stipulation, which in some cases has proved
detrimental to women, has also shown signs of being helpful in determining the
intrinsic aspect of empowerment like gaining a voice in terms of reproductive rights.
Such findings however bring into focus the government’s lack of commitment and
foresight in designing such reforms and hence this research helps us locate the sites of
development to make the term ‘empowerment’ more meaningful.

Abstract
In 2011, the Swedish government created a new curriculum for the compulsory school. This curriculum included stricter guidelines about what was to be taught in a variety of subjects taught in public and many private schools. This policy, entitled Lgr 11, has potential to influence a generation or more of Swedes regarding their understanding of the postcolonial world and future dealings with that part of the world and its peoples. In this paper, elements of postmodern and postcolonial historiography is employed when analyzing Lgr 11’s history syllabus. How the postcolonial world and its histories are represented in Lgr 11‘s narrative(s) is investigated. The importance of this document to Swedes is that, with a significant proportion of the Swedish population recent immigrants from the postcolonial world, the perspectives of that region are important in the development of identity for recent immigrants, Swedes themselves and in understandings of a large portion of the world for less recent immigrant Swedes. Swedish identity now includes postcolonial histories.

This study compares print media representations of refugees and asylum seekers with representations in short stories and poems written by refugees and asylum seekers themselves, within the frames of creative writing workshops. The primary research question guiding the study reads: How do (self-)representations in texts written by refugees and asylum seekers, within the frames of creative writing workshops, differ from representations of refugees and asylum seekers in print media.
As a theoretical foundation for the study serves the social constructionist assumption that language, rather than reflect, constructs reality, and that the way the world is understood affects policies, practices and actions – in this case concerning refugees, asylum seekers, refugee relief, refugee/asylum seeker reception systems, integration etc. Starting out from the notion that print media representations of refugees and asylum seekers follow certain recurring patterns – not only resulting in rather simplistic portrayals, but, also, almost systematically leaving out refugee and asylum seeker voices, views and opinions – the study, following Dorothy Smiths suggestion that individuals somehow excluded from a particular discourse may offer perspectives undermining it, turns to the refugees and asylum seekers’ own texts as a possible source of alternative representations. Using Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, complemented by semiotic analysis, (self-)representations in three anthologies with refugee and asylum seeker texts are compared to the results of a meta analysis of earlier research of representations of refugees and asylum seekers in print media.
The findings of the study suggests that there are similarities, but also significant differences in how refugees and asylum seekers are represented in their own texts when compared to print media. Consequently, it is argued that there is a potential worth fostering in the creative writing workshops for refugees and asylum seekers, as well as similar initiatives. They may be seen as a step towards increasing refugees and asylum seekers’ opportunities to voice their opinion in matters that concern them; as answering to the post colonial call for bringing in new voices to the (social) development debate; and as contributing to the realisation of an agonistic democracy/pluralism.